WUTA Leather Thinning Knife Skiving Tools 420B Martensitic Stainless Steel Professional Design DIY Craft Cutting Sharp Leathercraft Cutting Round/Flat/Slanted Blade, Right/Left Handed

Best budget skiving knife set I have found. WUTA continues to make some very quality products for leathercrafters. These skiving knives are excellent. They're flat/thin yet still manageable for a larger hand. The blades were delivered with a sharp edge and required only minimal stropping to get a strong starting edge. If you are looking to build a small collection of tools on a budget, this 4 piece set is an excellent start.

These blades have jimping along the edges to help improve your grip. I have seen people leather wrap the handles or even make scales for them, but I have not found that to be necessary. For really low angle skiving, any type of handle would get in the way. I have had difficulty getting them razor sharp, though.I originally looked at a single blade, then thought it might be good to have two of the blade shapes they offer. Then I found the four blade set and figured it was the best price for what you get. While I didn't think I would use one of the blade shapes, as soon as I did, it became my favorite.If "simple" and "It Works" works for you, I highly recommend - hopefully you are better at sharpening than I am.

WUTA Leather Thinning Knife Skiving Tools. These tools arrived sharpened and ready to use. I've used each tool and am pleased with the results. They are built well and finished nicely. I did drop one resulting in a long session of honeing to revive a hair slicing edge, so I know the steel is hard enough for leatherwork and they hold an edge quite well. Good tools, buy these things.

These were my first set of skiving knives. They got me through a few projects and helped me figure out what I wanted out of leatherworking knives. But they are not very good. I thought I hated skiving but it turns out that skiving is only awful when you have bad knives. First, 420b steel is not suitable for skiving knives (or frankly most other kinds of knives). They can be sharpened but will dull quickly and deform easily. Second, they arrived with no real cutting edge and needed significant work to make them useable. If you are not already good at sharpening knives you will want something else. Last, the edge geometry is not good. The back side of these should be flat, but the sharpening process that was used at the factory caused a significant convex grind on the back side. This makes it difficult to cut at the correct angle and is not worth the effort to fix. These are a good price for a beginner, but the manufacturer cut too many corners to make these at this price point.

This isn't a typical skiving knife. The end shouldn't butt against the palm of your hand, that's not the way it's intended to be used. It's intended to be held like a normal knife and used in a similar manner. If you're right handed, buy the "left" angle because you want it to angle away from you as you're pushing the blade. Fits my hand nicely and is sharp. There's no indication of a "compound edge" on mine and though it isn't hair-shaving sharp, it is sharp. It slices cleanly and easily down a sheet of paper. It does come with a little template for you to use to make a handle for it which is an unnecessary inclusion, but still there.

While this knife is an amazing value, unfortunately I didn't find this knife to be comfortable or sharp, here's why:The shape was difficult to hold: It was a good width, but too long. Many knifes of this style butt against the inner palm of your hand and allow you to exert some force; however, this one was too long to allow for that and I found it difficult to hold it while pushing.Also, it did not arrive very sharp: It looked sharp, but it just didn't cut the leather well. I tried briefly to strop it, but I was just not able to get it sharp enough to smoothly cut the leather.In the end, I returned it and will keep looking for a suitable skiving knife. I respect Wuta as a great leather crafting brand and regularly use other tools they make, this one just didn't work for me.

Seem like quality

The skiver is a very good tool however it needed some stropping work to clean up the mill marks and sharpen the edge for useful skiving. Overall it is a very good addition to my workshop and it works very well.